OpenAI signed a multi-year deal with Amazon to purchase $38 billion worth of AWS cloud infrastructure to train its models and support users.
The deal is another sign that the AI industry is becoming increasingly entangled, with OpenAI now at the center of major partnerships with industry players including Google, Oracle, Nvidia and AMD.
The AWS deal is also notable because OpenAI has gained prominence in part thanks to its partnership with Microsoft, Amazon’s biggest cloud rival. Amazon is also a major sponsor of one of OpenAI’s key competitors, Anthropic. Amazon and Microsoft are currently developing their own artificial intelligence models to compete with startups like OpenAI.
Many people now fear that the race to build more and more infrastructure – and the unusual financial deals behind the deals – are a sign of an AI bubble. According to forecasts, companies will spend over $500 billion on artificial intelligence infrastructure in the US in 2026–2027 report by financial journalist Derek Thompson.
Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, says huge tech companies and AI startups do need more efficiency and see a way to turn computation into profit. He adds that the up-to-date contract shows that Amazon is not such a laggard in AI. “A lot of people said it went into disrepair and went bankrupt, and yet they just put $38 billion into management, right, which is pretty unique,” he says.
Moorhead adds that OpenAI’s strategy is to reduce its dependence on a single cloud provider. “OpenAI is now being deployed to almost everyone,” he says.
Amazon stated in its announcement that it is building custom infrastructure for OpenAI. The setup includes two types of Nvidia chips, GB200 and GB300, which Amazon says will be used for both training and inference. The company also said the deal will give OpenAI access to “hundreds of thousands of cutting-edge NVIDIA GPUs, expandable to tens of millions of processors to rapidly scale agent workloads.”
OpenAI and other AI players appear to believe that agent-based AI will become increasingly significant as more users exploit AI tools to navigate the internet.
“Scaling pioneering AI requires massive, reliable computation,” OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman said in the announcement.
OpenAI he said last week about adopting a up-to-date for-profit structure that should enable it to raise more money. Although the company is still controlled by a nonprofit organization, its for-profit division has become a public benefit corporation.